The state Superior Court delivered a victory Wednesday for plaintiffs seeking to sue Roman Catholic dioceses over decades-old sexual abuse, denying a request to reconsider an earlier ruling that greenlighted such lawsuits.
The court denied a petition by the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown to review the case en banc, or before all the judges on the court.
That effectively upheld the ruling in June by a three-judge Superior Court panel, which allowed a lawsuit by an Altoona-area woman, Renee Rice, to proceed against the diocese. Her lawsuit alleges she was sexually abused as a child in the 1970s and 1980s by a priest, named in the lawsuit as the Rev. Charles F. Bodziak.
Her lawsuit accuses the diocese of fraud and conspiracy, alleging an ongoing pattern of the church covering up for sexually abusive priests.
Lawsuits over sexual abuse itself are barred after a limited number of years under the statute of limitations, but Ms. Rice’s lawsuit takes a different tack. It alleges a pattern of fraud and conspiracy that continued in secret right up until the release of a statewide grand jury report in 2016 into sexual abuse in the diocese. Father Bodziak had remained in ministry until that year, although the grand jury said another woman had brought an accusation against him as far back as 2003.
The Superior Court decision sets a precedent for numerous other cases alleging abuse in dioceses around the state, and it comes on the one-year anniversary of the release of a statewide grand jury report into six other dioceses, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg.
Ms. Rice’s attorney, Alan Perer, represents plaintiffs in more than 20 other cases against the Pittsburgh and Greensburg dioceses, alleging they had similar conspiracies that continued right up until the grand jury revealed their systemic nature on Aug. 14, 2018. Still other lawsuits have been filed in other dioceses.
“This is big,” said Mr. Perer, of Pittsburgh.
The Altoona-Johnstown diocese could appeal to the state Supreme Court, but unless it persuades that court to accept the case and overturn the ruling, the Superior Court’s decision “is now officially the law of Pennsylvania,” he said. The Superior Court panel based its decision on a recent Supreme Court precedent in a medical malpractice case, so he’s confident that the Supreme Court would uphold this ruling if it’s appealed.
“I’m so thrilled on behalf of all these victims who may really be able to do something now. I know it’s going to create shock waves in all the dioceses,” Mr. Perer said.
A Blair County Court of Common Pleas judge had dismissed Ms. Rice’s case, but now it heads back there for trial. She, like other plaintiffs making similar allegations, will still have to prove in court that the facts show the diocese conspired to conceal patterns of abuse and coverup. But the Superior Court precedent allows them to make that case.
The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown’s spokesman, Tony DeGol, said, “The diocese does not comment on pending litigation.”
The judicial moves come even as the politically sticky issues surrounding the statute of limitations are expected to resurface in the state legislature this fall.
Sen. Lisa Baker (R., Luzerne) announced on Wednesday that the Senate Judiciary Committee would hold a hearing on the issue Oct. 2. The committee currently has multiple proposals before it that would address various recommendations suggested last year by the grand jury that examined clergy abuse.
State lawmakers nearly reached a compromise on the issue last fall but the effort blew up in the GOP-controlled state Senate after an argument over whether — and how — to provide victims of decades-old abuse a new two-year window in which to sue.
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith. Reporter Liz Navratil contributed.
First Published: August 14, 2019, 7:22 p.m.
